Quick Fix Game 70: Infernal Affairs

[Ashbringer]

I didn’t claim the last Elim member because there were two of them 

It is impressive that the only thing I managed to do was push my own Contact though. 

[JNV]

I really didnt expect Aeoryi to be the Insider um please dont self vote next time I guess that couldve been bad if we hadnt gotten pretty lucky with how things turned out with Faerie but yeah honestly Informat not being able to kill vote makes it so as soon as enough evils drop the informat is just dead so I mean having more evils in there is like a temporary stopgap for that but that also just makes it harder for the village but letting the Informat do kill votes means you end up with the first run situation of zugzwang Octets the balancing act in this game is really tricky and theres lots of openings for swingyness anyway thanks Sart for trusting me over Neilash and killing them with me but yeah as soon as Archer claimed or like as soon as Archer confirmed my contact suspicions cause if they hadnt claimed they wouldve died and done the same thing but a cycle later the game was pretty much settled anyway turns out Kas can read me like a book good job Kas good game all this was pretty fun

[DrakeMarshall]

oh

I had a half-guess that neil/ash might be a possible Informant (well, that or Contact. hindsight) and kinda took the vote on Archer as encouragement

but ngl a lot of my reads of this game were just missing the mark

anyways TJ I stand in awe of your ability to do rollovers at 3am

Edited February 17 by DrakeMarshall

[neil the beguiled]

26 minutes ago, Archer said:

TJ! We talked about the flipless games! >:(. 

I feel like going 2/3 on exes to start the game should never result in a loss C3. Definitely leaned too far on the balancing imo. We had some ridiculous reads from Stick and Drake that were wasted. I wish the vote hadn't landed on me because those two were great bait if it came down to Contact hunting. 

But gg elims, full credit to ya. 

Re: what I asked TJ: basically threw a lengthy recap of the rules and accidentally said some things in that weren't correct but he didn't catch them. On me for not asking clearer questions 

Neil, why'd you give me Fae first? I was struggling to justify voting for them

I thought she’d be hard to catch. ;_; I only clocked you as contact c2 but oh my gods you tempted fate with the c1 rand.

2 minutes ago, DrakeMarshall said:

oh

I had a half-guess that neil/ash might be a possible Informant and kinda took the vote on Archer as encouragement

but ngl a lot of my reads of this game were just missing the mark

anyways TJ I stand in awe of your ability to do rollovers at 3am

I thought I was kinda obv tbh but I didn’t rlly care enough to deal with it because I can play in audacity. Just. It wasn’t great ;_;

[TheRavenHasLanded]

ouch. so basically its a tie.

[Faerie Braids]

I had half a thought that neil was the Informant, and it solidified after my death. I just wish I could remember what my exact reasoning for it at the time was, though. Good game to all, and thanks again to |TJ| for running it!

[Stick.]

“Hmm i kinda think archer could be the contact now given his sudden turnaround on JNV lol  

I think I’ll continue tunnelling him anyway tho so that elims don’t kill him in case this is true” 

^ from my GM PM at the start of C3 lol 

Anyway thanks for running the games @|TJ|!!

[Aeoryi]

3 hours ago, Stick. said:

You self voted 

I logged on 2 minutes late after eating dinner

It's fine, since it made y'all chase the imaginary insider and self-cannibilize

[Stick.]

Aeo my point is, self voting goes actively against your wincon and even if you planned to take it off before eod, it’s hard for the other players to reward self voting and at that point you might garner spite votes which are hard to fight off. I know you have your philosophy and you’re certainly allowed to have it, this is the second time you’ve effectively D1’d yourself. Self presing there would’ve meant you killing the village Contact. Not a bad deal, right? Just some friendly advice to think those votes through cuz this is a social game at the end of the day, and more importantly it’s a team game!! 

Edited February 17 by Stick.
Contact, not Informant

[Kasimir]

4 hours ago, JNV said:

anyway turns out Kas can read me like a book good job Kas good game all this was pretty fun

Wasn't this the conclusion of MR67?

Archer in MR67: "I'll follow Kas on E!JNV as Kas seems to have a sixth sense for JNV."
Archer in QF70b: "Nah V!JNV it is"

I think my conclusion is:

-IDK how tf I read JNV and it bothers me that IDK
-IDK how tf I read Aman and I'm starting to think this is the same Insane Troll Logic (thanks Drake) category as my JNV read because Aman was pretty clearly V for me
-IDK how tf I read Drake and it Also Bothers Me because he abused this to get me to claim Seeker N0 without scanning him and I'm never letting him live this down  And also read him V via Insane Troll Logic pretty much off the bat here.

---

Therefore I know nothing

Therefore I have arrived at the beginning of wisdom

[|TJ|]

GM Thoughts^TM:

I've always been interested in running a game with a defective elim team, and I thought the theme of The Departed was perfect for such a game. This meant that Insider and Informant HAD to be a part of the set-up. All the weird rules that supplemented them were necessary to remove some issues I anticipated. 

The biggest concern is obviously preventing the Informant from outing the elim team. This is one of the reasons for the changed elim wincon. Now, killing just 1 player seemed like a very quick way for the game to end, which is where Contact was introduced. Contact also allowed the information to leak into the village without hard-clearing any villagers if there was a direct communication. Killing two people is still a very easy wincon but I assumed the playstyle of the players with the roles would be enough to manage that. Anti-flips were also very important to this set-up to prevent outing as any dead and revealed Informant would have all the incentive to out the elim team. Similarly, Insider would out the Contact if death was imminent. Anti-flips would make way for the possibility of fake-claims which would, in turn, sow doubts in claims of the real Informant. 

The next issue was to protect the Informant's identity, with the major obstacle for it being the elim kill. You either give everyone access to the kill and prevent the Informant from misusing it [which is what happened in game (a)] or you don't give the kill to the Informant and hide the fact that the Informant cannot kill [as was the case in game (b)]. In the former's case, votes were immutable to prevent the Informant from changing the kill at the very last moment. 

All that went out of the window when the entire elim team was outed in the first cycle, the one possibility I did not account for. Aman and Drake definitely made the game more explosive and added even more unpredictability into it. 

Regarding game (b), I agree it was a harsh loss for the village. Things could have been different, of course. But Archer claiming was actually helpful to the elim because as he revealed the name passed onto him, it confirmed to JNV that Sart was genuinely evil, which meant Ash was the Informant. 

I still don't think this is the best version of the game it could be. Some possible tweaks could be that if Informant or Contact were to be NKed, it would only be possible with the unanimous vote of all elim members. Maybe another village role could be added, which the elims need to kill. But honestly, I'm tired of thinking how to balance this game xD

Thanks again, for all who joined and hopefully enjoyed the game! I aim to GM a normal game someday. >>

[|TJ|]

Another thing I forgot to mention - the vote inactivity filter. I think it helped a lot in terms of prevent players from skirting by without voting. The vote counts were 10/12, 10/11, 7/9 for game (a) and 11/12, 10/10 and 7/8 for game (b). Of course there's other specifics to get into like "does it count if you vote and then unvote" but if you uphold the spirit of the rule and not the letter, it can be a good tool to promote voting. 

[Amanuensis]

1 hour ago, |TJ| said:

Another thing I forgot to mention - the vote inactivity filter. I think it helped a lot in terms of prevent players from skirting by without voting. The vote counts were 10/12, 10/11, 7/9 for game (a) and 11/12, 10/10 and 7/8 for game (b). Of course there's other specifics to get into like "does it count if you vote and then unvote" but if you uphold the spirit of the rule and not the letter, it can be a good tool to promote voting. 

Hmm. What if we try running multiple filters at once. If you fail to vote two times in a row or three times total, you are removed from the game. Simultaneously, if you have an action you can take and don't use it twice in a row or three times total, you are removed. There could be exceptions if the players are intentionally not voting or using their ability and still posting, but that might encourage activity overall

[Araris Valerian]

Thank you to TJ for running these games!

As always, if anyone would like to try their hand at running a game, please get ahold of Wilson, Devotary of Spontaneity, Elbereth, Araris Valerian, Elandera, or StrikerEZ, or post in the GM Signups & Discussion Thread. Not only will we get you added to the list, but we'd also be more than willing to help out in any way we can. 

You can also ask questions and get some hints and feedback from everyone in our Art of Game Creation thread. With all the games that we've run so far, we have plenty of experienced GMs that can help you refine any game you're thinking about. If you would rather keep some detail secret, or are self-conscious about posting in thread (there's really no need to be; while we do slaughter each other, we are very polite about it), then I'm sure one of our fantastic committee members (Amanuensis, STINK, Sart, Fifth Scholar, Straw, Archer, Kasimir, and the above moderators) would be more than willing to help you out in private.

Thanks again to everyone that played, and we look forward to killing seeing you in future games!